international in the very heart of moscow. longtime are going to washington d.c. and here is what's coming up tonight on the big picture in the near wall to wall coverage of the boston terrorist attack and subsequent manhunt last week the mainstream media once again missed the mark do the media fail the american people and will there ever be an end to sensationalized news. infotainment also the n.r.a. is trying to make it easier for terrorists to get their hands on guns and explosives are republicans really ok with that we'll ask our guests in tonight's politics. and what our nation is attacked by terrorists the government goes into emergency mode doing whatever it takes to protect the american people from the

possibility of future attacks but is that enough of a reason to deny the american citizen his fifth amendment rights. we start off tonight with a farewell bob edgar president and c.e.o. of common cause suddenly died this morning at his home he was sixty nine bob who served the state of pennsylvania in congress for twelve years became the president and c.e.o. of common cause in may of two thousand and seven during six terms in the u.s. house bob led efforts to improve public transportation fought wasteful water projects and authored the community right to know provision of the superfund legislation i had the privilege of speaking with bob many times right here on the big picture and on my radio show he was a true champion of holding those in power out of all for their actions and his tireless work is extraordinary voice and his overwhelming action will be greatly missed.

you need to know this in the coming days and weeks the national media will spend hours and hours day after day analyzing just exactly what last monday's boston marathon bombing means for among other things civil liberties immigration and of course the future of the so-called war on terror however one of the biggest stories to coddle last week's chaos isn't so much what the media was reporting but how it was reporting as twitter users blurted out breaking news in real time cable news networks struggled to keep up with the fast pace of social media on wednesday c.n.n. first reported that the f.b.i. and boston police had captured one of the suspected marathon bombers and then retracted their story a little while after i'm told it now check this out is the attorney general of the united states who would know if there's an arrest that has been made this federal law enforcement sources just communicated with significant progress has been made

but no arrest anyone who says that arrest is ahead of themselves newspapers skimped out on facts as well the cover page of wednesday's new york post featured a photograph of two suspicious looking marathon watchers both of whom eventually turned themselves into the police to assert their innocence while other networks blundered over the seemingly unstoppable flow of information box news turned on the propaganda engines welcoming a host of well known islamophobia on to their programs to offer their so-called insights into the mindsets of the sarnia brothers. they are a member of a larger group of an army of islam of islamists acting together to bring justice to the islamic amount of the islamic nation they believe in this jihad is to diyala that violence is acceptable to impose islam because islam is under threat in their beliefs by the west and that's really the basic fundamental reason why these guys

carried it out this is a muslim problem that needs a muslim solution chairman now republican politicians like house homeland security chairman peter king are echoing fox's message calling for increased surveillance of the american muslim community and questioning the wisdom of immigration reform so what role has the media played in shaping the public's understanding of the marathon attacks and why has so much of the coverage been so inaccurate or so inflammatory us yet let's ask barry nolan former w b z newscaster professor of journalism at boston university and producer of the new film no way out but one that very welcome back good to be back barry you're a professor what grade would you give the media for its coverage of the bombings and why. i'd have to. many of them a d. a sprinkling of peas and an occasional eight tapper did

a really nice piece today where he went over to the street in cambridge where the firefight took place and he sat in the room with a neighborhood well as well know it's all this huge fire fight going on bombs going any took a few pictures and you have an eyewitness to an event that the man witnessed in real time and tweeted about it contemporaneously and have photos that's a pretty good source for a story. why was there so much misinformation though where the cable networks and newspapers is trying to keep up with the social media remember the movie about the all the president's man. deep throat tricks and remember when woodward and bernstein were pushing to break this huge story and the scene that you recall from that is a lot of people sitting around a big table arguing back and forth thinking about whether or not they really have

the goods to publish this explosive allegation right now well the internet changed all that in many ways because now many people followed it. lying in bed reading their blackberry looking at tweets and the tweets are instantaneous based on things people hear things people from the police radio they're not considered they're not thought about there's not things people do make up. and some things are things people just make up or misunderstand and for instance one of the things that may have thrown john king is in his conversation with an f.b.i. source or police source somebody said to him apparently we got him and jake tapper . took that to mean we've got it we have them in hand we've captured him and there's so much pressure to keep up with the speed of twitter the speed of the

internet the old things that the press used to do where there would be a bunch of. overweight why don't men sitting around the table going i don't. have to start. that conversation is not happening the way we once used to have that happen as we're paying a price for it we're getting a lot of bad information very quickly it's not even happening and there are you know among young diverse groups that are running and participating in the media now obviously in large part because this new dynamic is there any fundamental difference in your mind between the national coverage i mean you live in boston your professor boston university are right there on the ground back to you you were you went through the bombing area right after it happened. any fundamental difference qualitatively obviously quantitatively but. between the local coverage in boston local coverage and the national coverage and if so what was it and what

might have caused that difference if you identified one one of the things that's really good about some of the local coverage is some of the older guys like kevin cullen from the boston globe i saw him on i guess c.n.n. had him on m s n b c had him on while they were talking about the. one fund they raised twenty million dollars and here's a guy going around boston. and he knows all the cops he's been down to these watering holes for. cops he's been drinking with them easements weapons stories and when he looks for a source he can talk to somebody you can ask somebody and have a real conversation where somebody just rolls into town. they don't have the same connections with people so that there's a real value in the old style of news reporting where people cover to be and have connections and have relationships no good guy him as your wife ok i know she had

to have her need so it makes a difference the way you can get information and trust things i handle things that changed a lot me back in the seventy's i spent seven years in news in lansing michigan in the largest station in that market there were five of us in the news department every station had its own news department because the f.c.c. rules the the fairness dr were wired us to actually provide news i mean it was a requirement to get our licenses renewed every day every year to the best of my knowledge of the five six seven radio stations in lansing michigan now you know where i grew up none of them have news departments maybe one of them does obviously there are still some in boston they do it's a much larger media market but what does this say for the smaller media markets in america where there are no local news reporters. there is slowly finding out how to do they're trying to find out how to make hyper local work if you go to the

there's a lot of sites out there the pew aside for the pew press foundation and american journalism review and the columbia review of journalism lot of sides of the talk all the time about the future of journalism and the thoughtfully. the way they talk about it and one of the big thing that people are trying to figure out is how to make hyper local work as a business model is a struggle they haven't figured out yet you know if i. news has always been a republican propaganda machine pretty upfront about it but their obsession with the islamic character is that attacks seems pretty over the top even for them particularly since the largest the second largest investor in news behind rupert murdoch is a member of the saudi royal family back to guy who tried to give ten million bucks to renew giuliani after nine eleven the giuliani famously turned down what's the deal with fox and how much impact is that had

a republican attitudes and policies in the weeks since i'm looking at my computer this just the screen here and the headline on the fox news so i know is. ever where it. one of the things that we always know sells newspapers and magazines and i've done it since the founding fathers were dealing with their words in the woods is. clear and things on fire and things blowing up helps sell newspapers and people that are consultants that can sell their protective services know that this is just the right time to go on fox and all the year but it's very interesting there was a study two years ago by the center for counterterrorism and they looked at just numbers how well the trend is to be. in debt over the past few years due to terrorism and the numbers have been

consistently falling and one of the things there was a great article about this study in the atlantic and they noted that the number of americans killed by terrorism i think was twenty was lower than the number of americans killed by their own furniture accidentally falling on the right people died in bathtubs is the greatest risk very we're out of time and thanks very well and again thanks so much for being with us oh well thanks for coming up before the boston bombings took over the news cycle as we gun control was the talk of the nation now more than ever it's time to revisit that debate to the n.r.a. make it easier for the sarti of brothers to plan and implement their rights act i'll ask our panelists and tonight's big picture politics after the break.

let me let me i want to know we're going to let me ask you a question from. here on this network as we're having the debate we have our knives out if. we do this right it's about staying there again you're in a situation where being i don't want to talk about the surveillance me. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dog and. i'm sorry i missed the guy who cares an awful lot of my country music stars are through you know what that is my their theory sounds good i want to listen to feature a sufi on live from the christian point just because you're really going to speak to. you know the corporate media distract us from what you and i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm not me martin and we're going to break that. looking for every doctor up in the field that we won't find it here if you're

looking. relevant stories unique perspectives on top of my skin is dark. and i always turn things over to the big picture politics joining me tonight are neil asbury entrepreneur and host of the truth for america radio show steiger managing editor ross story and neil mccabe conservative commentator and author of the guns and patriots newsletter and thank you all for joining me each of you to have you with us the boston attacks have reignited the whole debate over counterterrorism. shouldn't the in a way also isn't this method to the gun control debate particularly since there is this thing called it hadn't which would allow us to know where the explosives in the original. person thank you. came

from you know that there would have been a chain of custody going back to the eighty's this is not new technology it's not a big deal with a small thing it's already done with plastic explosives and the n.r.a. lobbied against it repeatedly and every single time they want k. what are your thoughts on this i mean i think we've seen this happen a lot you know. pro-gun groups i should say are really good at sort of knocking down these regulations that may not seem like a big deal at the time but end up having really big effect for obama regularly i mean you've seen it happen with domestic violence as well you know state by state and the energy and other groups to make it you know try to knock down regulations that would make it harder for abusers to own guns and i find that really disturbing i think it one of those things where you really have to think about you know the elimination of this regulation you know in the end you have to balance that with

privacy of. but i think that what we're really finding is that these these knocking down of things that don't seem like a big deal at the time can end up having a big impact you know as we saw with boston with the this has the n.r.a. become the official bombers that's not such an exaggeration let's be clear though that because i'm not sure if it would deter terrorists how is it not true that they got their guns in there in their explosives illegally how is it not true what would have made it different because they got it all illegally you know these went outside the system so what are we going to do penalize law abiding americans because these are given his differences we could have known and immediately that was that he was that gun powder and where it would it had more to do with what police were up what kind of information the police were allowed to hold on going from which to leave how does an impact on this terrible tear is terrible heinous crime it we're comparing apples and oranges unfortunately. the other neal.

one i think is time you have to be aware of let me just toss one thing i'm going to because a lot of these let me talk about it so this way ok the fact that matters a lot of this there's a there's a huge sort of subculture in the gun owning community of making your own ammunition and this is a hobby this is a business it's something that's becoming a bigger bigger part of gun owners lives because it is so expensive now and so what the n.r.a. was trying to do is they're sort of trying to keep that sort of registry or tracking of people who make their own ammunition you know that's nonsense so no i just said it while i still really say no it's. probably because you had an n.r.a. document at the back of the matter is that it raised about forty bob as a terrorist so that if i want to if i want to if i want to load my own shells. load my own ammunition and i buy gunpowder from a company whether it's over the internet or whether it's the gun shop down the chute down the street it will have a tag and associated with it which will identify it i don't see it i don't know it

it doesn't cause any problems for me it could. easily be done there's no real you know the idea of people you know filling their own shells is no i mean it's not that i'm expressing to you the exact concern you asked what the problem is and i just told you i was wrong that's that's not a problem puts and the bigger issue which is the federal registry there is no reading roger that that's what they would that's what the result of all of this is and who's going to run that federal registry palosi harry reid brock obama it's a nonstarter it's not going to harry is already have the beach there is already over the last meal i can sell you a list tomorrow morning of ten hundreds of thousands of gun owners in the united states right down to the detail the kind of guns they own i can sell you that list it's available you know who's so who would buy it from if i was going to sell it to you the n.r.a. . let's face it that we've already had this to be and it didn't win i mean even if you don't have the wrong with this you don't have democrats because this is a war by the liberal elite on rural america says god does it would be first of all

there is no liberal elite there's a conservative only you got a bunch of billionaires up there too are buying legislators who are buying senators who are buying members of the house the american legislative exchange council alice you've got you've got a billionaire is putting money into the tea party i mean there is a conservative really in this country though my god i wish there was a liberal name ready for terry is that the idea that there's no liberal elite is absurd you know i'd be some liberals who are a smart of course i was not a liberal elite you want to i just think you know i think i agree with you that having something that's traceable and gunpowder or just to be. a crime happened i mean i guess that's that's what but i find so confusing about mccain i really do to change to. them quicker quicker than what. we would have known in a matter of hours where that gunpowder came from that would have done what while he may well have led back to

a receiver are you know i. i mean. in addition to that this is i mean there's just bizarre stuff if you have a gun store and it goes out of business the federal government is not allowed to keep the government the information the fine others register private information the this is registered gun dealers there are already you know putting that information into that god awful database the federal government according to this you know this tiahrt amendment you know there's this code for the n.r.a. . the if a store goes out of business instead of putting that information into an electronic database that could be easily searched by the f.b.i. that information has to go into a physical warehouse in a physical building in washington d.c. or outside of washington d.c. where a physical person has to spend days going through micro film to find it and there is no sense to this whatsoever except to make it hard for the a.t.f. ok i know that the thing that i find so funny about all of this if you can call it funny i guess is that you know you have folks worth so opposed to

a gun ownership database and yet these are the thing people who are completely ok with signing over a lot of others that will live through the liberty of after nine eleven and you know checking into library records and all kinds of online tracking so i guess i don't understand why we're ok with that invasion of privacy but not being a bit of a thief that could call the police is with the most strictest gun laws have the highest quantum rates to start with why it was chicago take a look what's happened to predators are going down america were all these guns were all these guns or we don't have those problems and more in america that's not true either and in rural america you have sort of one of the highest suicide rates when i was going to accelerate sic it would take a tom chicago we can leave it is happening in the biggest predictor of gun violence is gun proliferation it's that simple where you've got more guns you've got more gun violence you know that this isn't it is insincere to be you know i don't own a gun i don't like full disclosure but if it was a sincere to be why aren't we going after the culture of violence when we go in

after the movies to video games in the music because those. because you know there's the incentive to lose your yeah sure you want to. yes but these are your opinions watch more of our movies than we do on a per capita basis i mean there are not heated enough there to schools country it is not that's the same way they see roger and me being by the n.r.a. is putting out there to avoid their own industry there is a bias trust among gun owners that needs to be addressed and it's a distrust that is being fed in with lies and misinformation with virally and with more often that on with communication and concrete will often than not have even rang racial undertones to them and you know that says wicked unfair it is that you whip it out you have seen these you know what i'm talking about from from the things that are talking about the black man in the white house is going to get your you know its guns and i saw go to all the e-mails i would have met i sky i would i would have met all those that i saw in the right wing e-mails that i get these these viral e-mails and sort of the lack of i was going to light regular white wife and you got me and i know they're not you know this so passe come on our country is

better than that tom if our country was better than that then we would have passed a simple background check. back country electives that clear and present our countries better than that well it's a good step one ok and a good segue the west chemical fertilizer company in west texas and this is not the western part of texas this little town called west texas has not been inspected since one thousand nine hundred eighty five if they were fined in two thousand and six but. isn't this and by the way they had thirteen hundred and fifty times its. what thirteen thousand percent something like in the bathroom i found that the ammonium nitrate allowable this is the stuff that tim mcveigh used to blow up the more a federal building. that was allowable without safety checks isn't that a reason why we need the government you know look i was at a hearing today with janet napolitano. who was asked this question by senator

landreau and the fact is this this factory wasn't even on their radar and they're basically going to staff well they're understaffed because the republicans are just going over the over there i bet you could find somebody they do oversee to have issues doesn't work with me but they've got the there are so few inspectors in the state of texas that it's an average of once every sixty seven years these factor having said that it leaves this to the material itself from want to understand is the material itself is relatively safe for transportation and things like that the problem is that when it becomes under pressure. and so that was a kid neal's argument basically if i can if i can paraphrase that correct me if i'm wrong was. you know the government missed this and. bad on them or whatever if i may well i think final thing is that if they had private insurance which they should have had that an insurance company would if there was

a big pain these dead people ok fine so does it sure doesn't that take a doesn't demonstrate the progressive argument the liberal argument that we can't trust companies which are driven soley by the profit motive to always do the best yeah i mean i think that what neil just said i can agree with you we've seen that there's been a huge roll back in my own mental regulation of them. in the past few decades and you know definitely a concerted effort on the part you know those who favor deregulation and you know it's all well and good to just try to think that you know the companies will do it themselves but i think this really demonstrates that they can't and you know they hadn't seen regulators there and what was that thirty years is that i don't understand the difference ok what is the difference between an e.p.a. regulator and a guy on the factory no one and that guy who owns the factory going in for a no on a regulator's trade open to the public so nobody working at that factory wanted

this to happen right like them the people in work there's other managers there were managers there their workers there are there are technicians there while there are made this decision. we're you have any well you know us on site when this thing blew up but tom first of all some state and federal regulators missed it they just totally missed it and they should lose their jobs you know it was the way the government didn't do a good enough job so we need more big government no no i just want you guys you know already know you already have all the regulations on the books and you have regulators have enough to do it so we need a bigger governors and you have enough regulars but they missed it and they should be whole the counted. for that i'm missing back in one thousand nine hundred seventy in the eighty five and the people who own this plant also have to be held accountable i mean it's the outlier we have more regulations on the books it's costing our economy a trillion dollars a year already we have the five thousand people a year in the united states. and they need to be held accountable you know i can't support this at all it was a huge mistake both regulators and owners need to be held accountable enough laws

were broken they need to be held accountable for that as well ok more of tonight's politics break panel after the break. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom are welcome to the big picture. of potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but

what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery down so the bottom line there's still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. d.c. it is been a pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of it might still be a slog through drug listening words and see if you're exceptional. worse if you are going to. live out the day in a radio guy and. make. a want. to do good you've never seen anything like this i'm telling. you.